Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Quantum Of Solace

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Posted by Justin Gorka (Member # 3727) on 11-03-2008, 12:15 PM:

Was really looking forward to this. I feel a little let down. Without putting any spoilers in, the first half was pretty good, with an excellent start and a good build up to the main plot. From then on I think the film lost direction and became to frenetic. I get the feel large chunks were cut to get the (UK) 12A cert.
I'll watch it again, but Casino Royal was far superior.

[ 11-04-2008, 02:23 AM: Message edited by: Aaron Sisemore ]

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 11-03-2008, 02:40 PM:

Correct title:

'Quantum Of Solace'.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-06-2008, 11:13 PM:

quote: Justin Gorka
From then on I think the film lost direction and became to frenetic.

I think that's a problem with most action films these days.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-07-2008, 02:12 AM:

I just can't buy Daniel Craig as Bond, especially with that weird lip thing he has going on. Action star, sure. Bond, hell no.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 11-07-2008, 08:51 AM:

This is a pretty good film, but not as good as Casino Royale. Probably the first direct sequel to a Bond film as well. I disagree that the ending was weak, thought the final set pieces were pretty good. Craig is great as Bond and can't wait until they fully form his character

Justin the bbfc website says one scene was toned down on their advice before actual submission. Bond shouldn't ever look to be a '15' anyway in my view.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-07-2008, 09:34 AM:

I read somewhere online yesterday that Daniel Craig is so excited about Obama being elected president, that he (Craig) thinks now the world is ready for a black Bond.

Jeez, can't us white folks keep some of the good stuff for ourselves? [Razz]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-07-2008, 10:40 AM:

I'm ready for a female Bond.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-07-2008, 11:00 AM:

Joe, didn't you see Terminator 3? That one had the Terminatrix in it, and frankly she just looked stupid in the role.

I can totally see it and agree that the world and the entire Bond franchise IS ready for a "black bond". After all the sequels shouldn't be about continuing the franchise. They should be about racism and equality.

We all know Will Smith would be the first person that would be looked at for the role, but the movie would be sooooo much better if they would hire Chris Rock, or if he can't do it, then Dave Chappelle are really the only two black guys who could pull it off. Heck, either one of those guys could even use the "awwwww hell no" line of Will Smith to make it even THAT much better.

Oh no, wait, wait, wait...we could have Tyler Perry direct it, because just having his name on there will be worth another $50 million.

An even better idea. Let's go for total equality and get a black rapper that is extremely obese for the role! And he could be rapping as he fights and saves the world by sitting on people!!! I'M A GENIUS!!!!!!!

I know, I'll stop before I come up with too many great ideas. I'm really starting to think like a studio head.

Posted by Blaine Young (Member # 3992) on 11-07-2008, 01:03 PM:

Since this new film ties in directly to "Casino Royale", we booked a print for a "Double the 007" single showing at 9:15 to lead in to midnight showings on the 13th. We'll see how the sales do - and give a listen to the audience as they exit with both features fresh in their minds.

Posted by Joseph L. Kleiman (Member # 3097) on 11-07-2008, 01:41 PM:

"From Russia with Love" was designed as a direct sequel to "Dr. No" with Bond starting the film with the same Bond girl from the prior film.

Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 11-07-2008, 01:41 PM:

Bravo Blaine - that's awesome. What theatre is it?

I have Casino Royal recorded in HD on my DVR and plan to watch it on my digital projection system at home, but I'd rather see it on film somewhere.

I took my 4 year old to see Madagascar 1 at the Continental in Denver last night. We had a blast and are excited about the sequel.

Why doesn't this happen more???

Posted by Blaine Young (Member # 3992) on 11-08-2008, 01:12 AM:

Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue Washington - just outside of Seattle. The print Sony provided is in amazingly good shape - and has DTS discs to boot!

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 11-08-2008, 10:52 AM:

Actually, Sony offered us (MIT) a print for free to show this past Thursday night (we accepted). I think they're doing this with a lot of colleges.

Seems like a smart move to me!

Much better than making the predecessor titles un-bookable!

--jhawk

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-08-2008, 02:36 PM:

quote: Joe Redifer
I just can't buy Daniel Craig as Bond

Thats ok Joe... very few of us on this site have been able to get used to Joe Redifer playing Joe Redifer either.... I just don't know what it is but the Joe Redifer character seems to have been written so thin....

Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 11-09-2008, 10:49 AM:

There is an old expression: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". And so in Quantum the producers have presented us with a new character: "My name is Bourne......James Bourne". Wackiness ensues.

Unfortunately Quantum's focus on almost non-stop action sequences really seemed to underscore the lack of a cohesive and understandable plot. And whoever did the editing job must have gotten his training doing movie trailers because even the exposition scenes had that jumpy sort of previews look and feel (which further added to the difficulties in trying to follow what they were passing off as a plot).

0 stars out of 5 for the plot (or rather really not having a plot at all)
2 stars out of 5 for the action sequences (would have been higher rating here for inventiveness except for the lousy editing job of cutting back and forth to something else each time the action was occurring)

Did I mention it did not have a plot?

[ 11-13-2008, 09:42 AM: Message edited by: Jonathan M. Crist ]

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-16-2008, 04:39 PM:

Today at Regal 15 in Eugene, #1 and #8 (explanation to follow), 35mm.

Screen #1 had a bad xenon lamp. I'm sure the arc was moving around or something because the screen image looked like someone was waving a gel in front of the lens or something. Also the volume was not loud enough.

So I switched to #8, where the image looked much better, but the volume was once again not loud enough. There's a lot of softly-spoken dialog in this movie and it's hard to hear it all when the volume is too low. The loud stuff had no punch at all. Actually I suspect the soundtrack to this movie is quite sucky anyway. Anyway for god sake play it loud enough for people to hear the dialog.

*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW ***

"Quantum of Solace" manages to be both boring and dumb. The action sequences are a jumbled series of quick cuts adding up to nothing. The "plot", and I use the term loosely, is something about taking over the water supply of Colombia or some such thing. A highlight of the level of idiocy this film reaches is when the bad guys need to have a meeting so they all go to the opera and while wearing Bluetooth headsets*, they TALK OUT LOUD to each other while the opera is going on. Right, talking out loud during the opera, about things like taking over the Colombian water supply or some crazy nonsense. Nobody's gonna pick up on that. Your secret is safe with your fellow opera fans.

This movie SUCKS. I left after about 3 reels. It was wasting my time and I could barely hear the dialog anyway.

Zero stars. ZERO. This movie actually both BLOWS and SUCKS. Although I might have given it 1 star if I could hear all the dialog, who knows.

Regal gets an "F" for the presentation on screen #1 due to the bad screen illumination and also for the volume being too low.

*Well they might as well have been Bluetooth. No doubt they're supposed to be something more sophisticated than that but who knows for sure.

Posted by Michael Gonzalez (Member # 593) on 11-16-2008, 06:57 PM:

Aww man I wanted to make the Jason Borne reference but Jonathan beat me to it. Over all I liked it and disagree about it not having a plot, I do admit that it didn't really have a resolution to anything but it is looking like this may be the middle segment of a James Bond Trilogy so look for resolution in the next movie.

------------------- SPOILERS ----------------------------

Alright so we had a car chase scene, a foot chase scene, a boat chase scene and an airplane chase scene, I half expected Bond and a group of baddies to jump on horses for another cliche movie chase scene.

The plot of the movie seemed to be about learning more of the Solace group and it's members and activities (and stopping their latest plan). This corrsponds with Bond's motives as far as getting to those responsible for Vespa's death. I am guessing the information learned (but not revealed to the audience) near the end of the movie, will lead to the actual take down of the Solace group in the third movie (after which I assume Craig steps down as Bond).

I was really hoping that the movie would end with Bond somehow recapturing Mr. White. I thought that would have been a nice arc to the movie and would have provided at least some resolution before the next film.

Over all very entertaining and I would give it 3.5 stars ot of 5

Posted by Mike Schindler (Member # 1309) on 11-17-2008, 12:31 AM:

This movie is everything I wanted it to be. CASINO ROYALE was near perfection. But there was always that risk that Part II would be the same as every other Bond movie, totally disregarding what had come before by taking Bond on a completely unrelated adventure.

Instead, this movie picks up right where CASINO ROYALE left off. That movie was really dense. And QUANTUM OF SOLACE digs even deeper.

As this new continuity progresses, the previous 20 movies become less and less relevant. While I'd like to see some of the old familiar elements reintroduced into the franchise, they better have a really good reason to be there, or I'm checking out.

I hope that Daniel Craig remains the one and only Bond for the rest of his career. I'd love to see the character evolve as he ages. I want to see what a 75 year-old Bond is up to.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 11-17-2008, 10:09 AM:

The similarities with Bourne Ulitmatum were deliberate, not coincidental, I believe. Dan Bradley and Terry Madden both worked on Bourne as second unit director and AD, and reprised those roles in QoS.

I thoroughly enjoyed QoS, but agree with several criticisms. I felt like the plot was edited down from the script and we really deserved to learn more about QUANTUM, especially about what Bond learned from Greene.

I'll also agree with all the mainstream critics in that the lack of a sexual relationship between Bond and Camille seemed out of place with the 007 genre. And I really didn't care for the Jack White / Alicia Keys duet. Oh, and also, the initial car chase scene was tough to follow.

But it was still fun and exciting.

--jhawk

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 11-17-2008, 12:17 PM:

It was a good ride. I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous one.
Saw it at the Century 21, San Jose. Presentation was excellent, however the CAP code on this print was ridiculous. I stopped counting after seeing about 8 very conspicuous cap coded frames in the span of one reel.

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 11-18-2008, 05:54 PM:

It was still up there with the rest of the Bonds, I will agree strongly with others comments on the Bourne simularities. I hated the that hand held camera work on the action scenes , it spoilt them. The car chase would have been so much better without it.

It moved well yet lacked the glamour most of the Bonds have.

The prints and sound was quite good and I was ever so pleased to have DTS discs arrive with the print.

I need to watch it again i think to form an exact opinion.

for now it gets a 3 out of 5 from me.

it lost half a point for the gunbarrel sequence at the end.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 11-22-2008, 07:35 PM:

Bond#22 has Her Majesty's Thug hunting down a kingpin from the secret organisation, Quantum, who means to acquire ground water sources in Bolivia for his own personal profit. Quite what this has to do with the same organisation brokering deals between terrorists and rogue bankers (the residual plot thread from Casino Royale) is anybody's guess and herein lies the central flaw of Quantum Of Solace (what does that title even mean, anyway?)

Quantum Of Solace was intended to be the sequel to Casino Royale, indeed it follows on directly from its predecessor without so much as an introduction. But the problem is that the script makes little effort to clarify the overall objective of the Quantum group, with the result being that Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace come across as two completely unrelated stories when we are expecting quite the opposite. With the exception of the carry-over alpha villain, Mr White (who is swiftly written out of the plot), this new film quietly departs from the plot of its predecessor and this merely serves to create confusion as to exactly what the plot of this installment is. Indeed, Quantum Of Solace has so little to do with its predecessor that one wonders why the "To Be Continued..." style ending of Casino Royale was even used. It all smacks of over-zealous marketing and a rushed script. This is also evident in a marked continuity error in M's attitude towards Bond between the two films. Her statement, "When you can't tell your friends from your enemies, it's time to go", is a direct contradiction to her congratulating 007 on his "trusting no-one" at the conclusion of Casino Royale.

The film has much in common with the Bourne movies in terms of style and setting; the roof-top chase sequence is almost lifted in it's entirety and the action editing (particularly the car chase sequence) is even less discernable than those from the Bourne films - do we really care about all those split second gear changes and throttle pedal stabs?

Performance-wise, most are adequate but replaceable, the exceptions being Giancarlo Giannini, who brings much heart to the character of Mathis, and Judi Dench who, as always, is a treasure. Jeffrey Wright is criminally underused as Bond's intriguing American opposite number, Felix Leiter. The films key asset, however, (as was the case in Casino Royale) is Daniel Craig who is an excellent 007 and, arguably, the best yet. If nothing else, Daniel Craig deserves a better vehicle for his talents.

6.5 out of 10

Posted by Benny Walters (Member # 4894) on 11-23-2008, 10:14 PM:

quote: Sean Weitzel
Presentation was excellent, however the CAP code on this print was ridiculous. I stopped counting after seeing about 8 very conspicuous cap coded frames in the span of one reel.

The print I screened had no less then a dozen in the reel that had the flying scene... Uber-annoying.

Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 11-24-2008, 03:09 PM:

This was bound to happen. I have not seen the film yet but they set the bar so high with Casino Royale they would be no way they could close in the perfectness of Casino. They thought they could do it again but it seems that this time it lacks.
Demetris

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-24-2008, 06:40 PM:

You guys ought to go through and cut those frames out! That may very well be LESS annoying then the missing frames themselves. This is an annoying problem in which D-Cinema does not suffer!

Mark

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-30-2008, 10:46 PM:

Finally had time to see this tonight... Megaplex Gateway screen #11. The image was too bright causing the blacks to be washed out. There also appeared to be a slight hot spot in the right part of the image from my seat in row J seat 9. This is a curved matte white screen! Sound was very definately a tad too loud as well. Mike you need to check this room out!

I enjoyed the movie overall... Not as well put together as the last installment but this one didn't really let me down all that much either. I felt the editing was way too tight with too many cuts too quickly. Other than that it was enjoyable.

Presentation: 2 stars
Movie: 3 stars

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 12-02-2008, 10:25 PM:

CINEMA: Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons, Sandy, UT
AUDITORIUM: 9
PRESENTATION: Dolby Digital Cinema DLP
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None [Cool]

RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

THE PLOT: A guy wants revenge. A girl wants revenge. A dictator wants his country back. A guy wants to extort him. The CIA wants to hang around and not care. Wackiness ensues.

I liked it better than Casino Royale, largely because this movie actually ends (well, I guess it IS the end of Casino Royale, actually). But not enough to give it a better rating. Still, I look forward to the next installment.

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 12-03-2008, 12:05 AM:

I saw this when it first came out, I just never really cared to post nor gotten around to it. Like all most everyone else, I did not like this movie as much as CR. There was ZERO plot, just enough to string along taking Bond from one country to the next. I have to disagree with you Sam, this movie did not end at all. There was no resolution to the main story, the only thing it did was capture Vespars "lover". We are not privy to the information that was gotten from Mr. Green, just told what happened to him.

2.4/5 [thumbsup]

for some cool action scenes. I still prefer Casino Royale to this.

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 12-05-2008, 07:58 PM:

Possible Spoilers

Just saw it tonight and I thought it a decent follow up to CR. The ending made me feel like we're seeing the point where the legend is born (or reborn). The final image was touching, as if Bond has symbolically left his humanity behind, and won't make the same mistake twice.

The allusion to "Goldfinger" was cute in a grim sort of way, and I liked how every location was begun with the name in a different font (no Trajan from what I remember).

Now I can't wait for the next one!

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-09-2009, 10:32 AM:

I finally started watching this last night - holy crap the editing SUCKS on this movie!!! Good lord, you can't even follow the action! What idiot cut this thing together? I don't know what's worse - the seizure-cam or these quick cuts. I got the sense that they wanted you to be able to follow two things going on at once, but the result of their edit job is that you can't really follow either of them.

So far the movie is... eh. I'll come back and finish this when I finish watching it... probably tonight. So far, Casino is much better.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 07-09-2009, 04:31 PM:

quote: Mark J. Marshall
So far, Casino is much better.

And it will remain so.

There's such a chasm between the quality of Casino and Quantum it's incredible.